Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  After issuing an APB for the female suspect, Barnes and Stef learn that Anna Oliynyk isn’t the only Sheepshead Bay witness to have had a run-in with her.

  A dry cleaner up the street had called the police earlier to claim that a woman fitting her description had stolen his Humane Society collection can. He’d reportedly apologized for bothering them with what seemed at the time like a petty crime. He, too, saw her head up the block toward the Myers house.

  The NYPD is staking out both Margaret Costello’s apartment in the East Village and Bernadette DiMeo’s apartment in Chelsea. The media has blasted out a BOLO—be on the lookout—for the female suspect, stressing the most identifiable characteristic—the red scar on her cheek.

  With a description like that, it’s only a matter of time before someone spots her. Or she’ll turn up at Costello’s or DiMeo’s place, and the uniforms will arrest her.

  Meanwhile, the reward hotline has brought a fresh onslaught of tips, with a couple of credible sightings. “We’re looking at a long night,” Barnes tells Stef as they get out of the car back at the precinct. “I’m going to grab those hot dogs. You want two? And a knish? Extra mustard on all?”

  “Nah, you might bring back some weird ethnic knish instead.”

  “A knish is ethnic.”

  “Kid! Relax! I was just joshing you. I’m not hungry, but go get yourself some food. You’re getting crabby again.”

  At the food cart, Barnes orders three hot dogs and then wolfs them down as he waits for an elderly woman to get off the pay phone. It can’t take long; she’s just calling a car service to pick her up. Several shopping bags from Alexander’s sit on the sidewalk beside her lug-soled black old lady shoes.

  A fire engine comes screaming down the avenue. It barely misses a taxi, which swerves out of the way and in turn almost hits a jaywalking pedestrian.

  The cabbie leans on the horn and screams out the window, “What the hell’s the matta wichu?”

  “Pedestrians got the rightaway, you jerk!”

  “Firetrucks got the rightaway, you—”

  The cabbie’s profanity-laced snarl disappears into a cacophony of honks from surrounding traffic and a rattling construction jackhammer and the old lady shouting into the phone, “No! Eighth Avenue! Eighth!”

  Barnes eyes the subway entrance at the end of the block, longing to escape uptown, to check on Wash, or downtown, to check on the baby. But he’s not going anywhere anytime soon unless it involves Perry Wayland.

  Running footsteps join the ruckus and Barnes turns back just in time to see a scruffy-looking kid about to make a grab for the old lady’s shopping bags.

  He throws himself in the mugger’s path and whips out his badge. The kid does a skidding about-face, and disappears.

  Shaken, the intended victim hangs up the phone and thanks Barnes, tears rimming her weathered eyes. “Do you know what’s in those bags? A new black dress and shoes to wear to my husband’s funeral on Monday.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  “He always took care of me. Now I’m alone, and the city is so dangerous now . . . What am I going to do without him?”

  Barnes pats her shoulder and reassures her she’ll be all right. Reassured by the lie, she digs around in her big vinyl purse, producing a lace handkerchief to wipe her eyes, and a crumpled dollar, which she tries to give to him.

  “Thank you, ma’am, but I can’t.”

  “I insist. You poor police officers put your lives on the line every day. They don’t pay you anywhere near what you’re worth.”

  “I appreciate the thought, but it’s illegal.”

  “Nonsense. I always tip the nice young traffic policeman who helps me cross the avenue in front of my building.”

  Barnes considers asking her where she lives. But what’s he going to do, report a fellow officer for pocketing a buck now and then from a grateful old lady?

  Code of silence.

  He waits with her until the car service appears, helps her into the backseat, loads her shopping bags into the trunk, and once again extends his sympathy.

  “God bless you and keep you safe, Detective Barnes.”

  Your lips to His ears, he thinks, returning to the pay phone. Even if Wash went out earlier, he’s got to be home by now. It’s getting dark out, and he just warned Barnes last night about the dangerous streets. Yet he still isn’t picking up.

  Barnes calls directory assistance, gets the number for the bodega, and dials it. No answer there, either.

  All right, that makes no sense. The place is open twenty-four hours. He must have dialed wrong. Rather than waste another quarter or more time now, he calls the hospital, prepared to argue his way to information on his daughter.

  This time, however, when he explains who he is and what he wants, a nurse tells him to hold.

  After the longest few minutes of his life, he hears, “Stockton?”

  “Delia!”

  “They said you called. I thought you’d come, or call back. I couldn’t even get in touch with you.” She’s woozily accusatory. Fair enough.

  “What’s going on? Is the baby . . .”

  “She’s okay now, but . . .”

  His heart clenches. “What happened?”

  “She had some troubles, so they took her upstairs.”

  “Upstairs where? What kind of troubles?”

  “Something with her breathing.”

  “Something? Something what? She couldn’t breathe?” Neither can he, the air suctioned from his lungs as he thinks of that fragile, precious infant, alone in a glass cradle, struggling . . .

  “They gave her some medicine through a tube. They’re going to keep her in the ICU.”

  “For how long? Did they say?”

  “I hope not long. You’re gonna have to pay for this, and if she needs expensive medicine—”

  “Don’t worry about that right now,” he snaps. “Just make sure they do whatever they have to do for her.”

  Silence for a moment. And then, “Oh, don’t you worry yourself, either. I will. And I’ll make sure you get the bill.”

  “Listen, I didn’t mean—”

  She hangs up on him.

  With a curse, Barnes slams down the phone so hard the surrounding shelter rattles.

  He lights a cigarette and smokes it fiercely as he walks back to the precinct and the case of the missing, possibly murderous, millionaire. It’s not productive to waste energy resenting Perry Wayland, but damn, it’s satisfying.

  “Barnes! Where’ve you been?” Stef jumps up from his chair and grabs his suit jacket.

  “I told you. I went to get hot d—”

  “Where, Nathan’s in Coney Island? Come on, we’re driving out to Long Island. Wayland was spotted out there Thursday night, getting off the train in Montauk.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The female cop, Officer Vazquez, stands poised beside Bernadette as she unlocks the door to her apartment. She finds it dark and still. Flipping on a light, she sees that everything is just as she left it—even Chappy, her cat, who was sleeping on the couch when she headed out earlier.

  He usually barrels toward the door when he hears the key. This time, he saunters over after she opens the door and rubs against her legs, purring, instead of ferociously head-butting her.

  “Everything look okay?”

  “Yes, other than the fact that my cat isn’t dying of starvation for a change. He’s probably on his best behavior because you’re here.” Bernadette picks up the cat and pets him, not sure what’s supposed to happen next. “Do you, um, want to come in?”

  “That’s not necessary, as long as you don’t see anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No.” The whole apartment—living room, kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom—is visible from where they stand, just inside the door. The policewoman does check the windows in the living room and bedroom, confirming that they’re locked, and scanning the fire escape beyond.

  “All right, then. I’ll be here in the
hall, just in case . . .” Seeing Bernadette’s expression, she adds, “It’s a formality, really. Officer Dwyer won’t let anyone get past him outside.”

  Closing the door after her, Bernadette hesitates before locking it and sliding the chain. It seems superfluous with an armed cop on the other side, but she’s seen movies where the killer sneaks up and kills the guard. She can’t bear to think of anything happening to the nice lady in the hall, and she seems capable of defending herself, especially against another woman. But Bernadette feels better knowing there’s an extra measure of security between her and the rest of the world.

  She leaves her own dinner on the counter and sets out a bowl of food for Chappy. He pokes at it and strolls away, uninterested.

  “Did you catch another mouse? Is that it?”

  The only other time Bernadette came home to find that Chappy wasn’t frantic for food, she’d quickly discovered the reason: a mostly devoured mouse by the heat register in the bathroom.

  She goes in there now, bracing herself for rodent remains, but there’s nothing. She scrubs her hands with soap and hot water, as she always does when she comes home, but this time, she keeps glancing at the closed vinyl shower curtain.

  You’d think Officer Vasquez would have checked behind it, just to make sure . . .

  But why would she? There’s no reason to believe that someone got in while Bernadette was out. The door was double locked, the windows were locked . . .

  It’s fine. Everything is fine. There’s no one hiding behind the shower curtain, unless . . .

  Unless someone is hiding behind the shower curtain.

  She turns off the water and dries her hands, staring at it. Then she holds her breath and counts, one, two—

  On three, she yanks the curtain aside.

  The tub is empty. Of course it’s empty. No stocky murderess with an angry red scar on her cheek.

  Why kill the others after all these years?

  Is it like when that Manson’s follower, Squeaky Fromme, tried to assassinate President Ford back in the ’70s? Is this killer trying to protest Oran’s imprisonment?

  More likely, she’s just some kook looking for attention. Even notorious killers John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy have their creepy bands of devotees. Bernadette has encountered her share of Brooklyn Butcher–obsessed freaks over the years. But this one has done the unthinkable.

  Bernadette tries to muster sorrow for the dead women, but feels nothing other than shock, of course, and maybe a macabre fascination. She’s lost her ability to feel.

  She goes to the bedroom and sheds the too-tight skirt and pantyhose, feeling guiltier over that than for her grief deficiency.

  She dons elastic-waisted sweatpants, exactly as she’d longed to do when she was walking home and facing the prospect of heading back out to another mass. But she didn’t choose to skip church. The officers ordered her to do so, right? Well, not ordered, exactly. If she’d insisted on going to church, Officer Vasquez probably would have accompanied her. But it’s not easy, dragging herself up and down the avenue in all kinds of weather to hear the same sermon over and over and over . . .

  Nor was it easy to destroy the embryo planted in her womb by the lunatic who murdered her family.

  Nothing has been easy since that terrifying June night in Dyker Heights.

  Not a day went by after that when she didn’t wish that she, too, had been slaughtered in her bed. When she found out that she was pregnant, she truly intended to take her own life, but . . .

  You were a coward. You couldn’t do it. Not then.

  On a hot August night, she ended the pregnancy alone in the bathroom of the apartment where her family had died. Her grandmother, who spoke only Italian and had moved in as her legal guardian, found her hemorrhaging on the floor and called an ambulance. Two days later, Bernadette found out she would never bear children. The following week, she went off to Cornell University. Her parents would have wanted her to go.

  That fall, she lived one life at school and another when she made the journey back to testify at the trial. There, she met the other girls. Tara Sheeran and Christina Myers bonded over their pregnancies. Despite the circumstances, Bernadette sensed an unimaginable flurry of anticipation whenever she saw them. They actually seemed to want their babies.

  Margaret Costello was pregnant, too, but she was different. She kept to herself. There was nothing giddy about her.

  She wasn’t brave, or stoic, or even just resigned, Bernadette later realized. Just in shock, and maybe stoned sometimes, too.

  She didn’t want the baby. She didn’t necessarily want to be alive, either. But she didn’t seem capable of doing anything about it.

  That’s why Bernadette decided to help her after her daughter was born.

  Sometimes, she thinks about what she did and she sees herself as a savior. Other times, she wonders if Satan himself entered her body that night and made her do what she did.

  She returns to the living room, shoos Chappy off the couch cushion, and reaches beneath it. Hidden there is the one thing she wouldn’t want Sally to see if she decides to snoop sometime while feeding the cat.

  She pulls out a large brown envelope, opens the metal fastener, and removes a stack of yellowed Ithaca Journal clippings from January 1969.

  “Baby Rescued in Gorge,” Jessie tells Amelia as they stand halfway across the suspension bridge, staring down at the gushing white waters of Fall Creek. “That’s what the headline said the day I was found.”

  “How do you know?”

  “One of the nurses at the hospital cut out the newspaper article. I’ll show you. There are pictures of police officers holding me, and the bridge, and the girl who found me. The nurse thought I’d want to know about it someday, so she cut out everything that was in the papers after I was found, and she made a scrapbook. She gave it to my parents when they adopted me.”

  Amelia digests that. The person who’d found Jessie had called the police. Jessie had been taken to the hospital. A kindly nurse had given her a tremendous gift. And then she’d been legally adopted into a stable, loving family. Everyone involved seems to have done everything right.

  Not in Amelia’s case. All she has is a stupid little dress that was probably made for a doll, and a basket that may not even mean anything, and a story that for all she knows is entirely made up.

  Wind gusts, and the bridge sways. She grabs the low rail and looks up at the darkening sky so that she won’t have to look down at that rushing water that can sweep you away . . .

  “Are you okay, Mimi?”

  “Yeah. I just . . . I can’t believe someone carried a little baby out here.”

  “I know, and in the dead of night, in January. It was two degrees out. Two. Whoever did it just left me there to freeze to death.”

  Whoever did it . . .

  Her mother?

  “I used to think the girl who found me was my actual birth mother. Like, maybe she secretly had me, but she couldn’t keep me because she was only twenty, you know? She was a pre-med student at Cornell. Really smart. She didn’t want to just leave me somewhere, so she pretended she found me in the gorge.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I found her last year and she said she wasn’t my mother.”

  “Maybe she was lying.”

  “Maybe I just wanted to believe my mother wasn’t someone who would leave a tiny baby all alone to freeze to death on the coldest night of the year!” Jessie snaps back at her. “But that doesn’t make it true.”

  “Well, maybe your mother wasn’t the one who left you. Maybe you were kidnaped.”

  Jessie smiles a sad smile. “Bet you want to believe the same thing, right? That you had a wonderful, happy home and some stranger broke in and stole you in the dead of night and left you somewhere.”

  “It could happen.”

  “But people don’t kidnap babies for kicks. They have a reason. Like, ransom
. Or they couldn’t have a baby and they wanted one.”

  Amelia thinks of Calvin and Bettina.

  “So anyway . . .” Jessie sighs. “This is my bridge. And that’s my sad story.”

  “At least it has a happy ending.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Jessie, you live here. In this beautiful town. In a real house, with a sister and brother and parents who take you to look at colleges and pay for things and don’t believe in lies. I don’t have that.”

  Jessie stares at her, and she braces herself for a sarcastic comment.

  It doesn’t come.

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she says softly, wrapping her arms around Amelia. “But we’re going to find our moms, you know? We are. And Si’s going to help us.”

  Our.

  We.

  Us.

  “Let’s make a pact, Mimi. If you find your mom before I find mine—or the other way around—we won’t just move on and forget each other. We’ll still help each other look, okay?”

  “I could never forget.”

  “Neither could I, but maybe if life gets normal for you and you have your mom back . . . you know. It might happen. So we have to promise.”

  “I promise,” Amelia says as they shake on it. “I promise I’ll help you if you help me.”

  “We lucked out, kid,” Stef says, driving east on the Long Island Expressway. “Try coming out here during rush hour, or on a summer weekend, and traffic would be crawling. It would take you five, six hours to get out to the Hamptons. Ever been out there?”

  Barnes shakes his head, lighting a cigarette and staring out at suburban neighborhoods. Lamplight, chimney smoke, minivans.

  “Barnes?”

  “No. Never. You?”

  “No. Heard it’s nice, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The conversation lags.

  “Why are you so quiet?” Stef asks after a minute.

  “Just thinking about the case.”

  He has been wondering what Wayland has to do with that homicidal Scarface back in New York, and if he really did take a train to Montauk Thursday night, but mostly, he’s worrying about his daughter.